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Wednesday, August 11, 2010

City Confirms $50 Million Shortfall

You read about it out here two days ago. Fox 59 News confirms from City Controller David Reynold that revenues for the 2011 city budget will be at least $50 million less than this year.

Indianapolis — $50 million. That's how much less city leaders will have to work with next year to keep Indianapolis running. They're now trying to find ways to cut costs while delivering the same services to residents.

The city controller said the deficit is a reflection of the nation's downward economic spiral.

"It's caused by the wages in Marion County being down from the prior year. The amount that we get in 2011 reflects the economic activity of 2009," said City Controller David Reynolds.

The controller was anticipating an 8% drop but the final number is actually a 15% reduction in revenue.

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard will announce his budget proposal for next year later this month.

I'm not sure how Reynold could claim he was expecting a reduction about half this size if he had been following the downwardly spiraling state income tax collections over the past couple of years. Indianapolis residents will be ready to burn Mayor Greg Ballard at the stake (only a figure of speech) when they see the deep budget cuts that will occur in the delivery of basic city services after he just approved a $33.5 million give-away to billionaire Herb Simon and his Indiana Pacers at the same time he has been backdooring tax increases on average taxpayers.

All over the country cities and states are failing, and the unscrupulous powerful and wealthy are grabbing everything they can get, while the gettings good. (The guilty and aware in Indy know to whom in Indy I am referring.)

The USA is bankrupt from the cost of fighting wars for Israel, thanks to the influence of extremely influential powerful lobbies for Israel, and the federal government cannot afford to bail us out.

We aren't fighting these wars for Israel; we're fighting these wars for the benefit of the military industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about before leaving office. Unfortunately, we failed to heed his warning. They are the ones who have destroyed this country by carrying out assassinations, manipulating our electoral process and our economy to the point the people are virtuallly powerless and our constitution is practically meaningless. Our country has been brought to financial ruin and the blood is on the hands of the few who run this vast complex. Nothing is really what it appears any more.

Reduce spending by X% across the board until we descend from fantasy to the reality of what's important.

What's "important" and what isn't? By my estimation- I think stop the subsidation of professional sports teams. It will cost money to keep the stadiums minimally maintained, but apparently more money to stay in the stadium-rebuild loop as a medium market. Reduce the parks & recreation budgeting. Reduce funding for the Arts. Reduce garbage pick-ups. Reduce operational hours of city offices. Stop spending money on benefits for non-citizens this side of emergency care. Cap dysfunctional parenting reunification attempts. Bring back multi-unit foster care instead of the money we spend for one kid in one home.

If this sounds hateful and draconian, then what are your suggestions? I'm trying to leave public safety & education alone while more successfully protecting children.

You think you can reap more taxes in this economy out of Marion county taxpayers and businesses? Remember-Federal taxes go up next year and our health "reform" kicks-in further.

dc, I don't know if you've followed budgets in recent years, but parks and rec is operating on a significantly reduced budget. The only reason it got an increase in 2008 was to fix leaking pools. It's not shoe string like animal control is, but I wouldn't put it past this town's politicians to get it to that point in 2-3 years.

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